How to Prune Lomandra: Part 1 (Hard Prune)

Lomandra has become a very popular landscape plant due to it’s grass-like appearance and low maintenance requirements. While they do not require annual pruning like grasses, they do benefit from a hard pruning after a number of years in the ground. In this video, Jeff and Alexa demonstrate how to prune a Lomandra that has started to look a bit rough from a ~4 year old landscape.

[@dirttrackin280h]

You are pruning them like the commercial maintenance guys do in the cities. Lomandras should be cut a few inches from ground level to keep its natural grass like form and to remain healthy. There is really no reason to prune them like you did. I understand you likely do not want a blank spot in the garden once you have pruned the Lomandra, but they grow so fast that you will literally see growth within the next few days. Plus, the garden you're working in has such a beautiful natural design to it, even more of a reason not to prune like you did.
I prune Lomandras and all grasses with bypass hand pruners. Pruning them with power shears will typically "shred" the ends of the blades of the plant. I cringe when I see people using power shears on grass like plants. Leave that to the commercial maintenance guys, this yard deserves better. Yes using hand pruners takes longer, but in the end, I think you get better results. Less clean up, too.
You did a great job on the design of this garden.

[@sierraazulnurserygarden]

Thank you for watching and for the thoughtful comment. With Lomandra in particular, we don't feel there's much difference between hand pruning and mechanical pruning aesthetic wise because they already have square-tipped ends with a naturally jagged look. We wanted to show the option since many people do have mass plantings and it wouldn't always be practical time-wise to hand prune.
In our observations of many Lomandra plantings, pruning at different heights doesn't affect the appearance after a couple months of growth. The extra hard pruning you described is definitely one effective method for rejuvenating Lomandras.